What to expect
King Vidor joins monumental images of urban scale to a close study of marriage, work, and disappointed ambition. The film’s force comes from moving between the anonymous mass and the fragile private life hidden inside it.
How to ease in
The story is plain even when silent-film performance grows emphatic. Notice how staircases, desks, windows, and crowds repeatedly reduce the couple to one small unit among many.
Heads-up
One ambitious office worker discovers how difficult it is to remain an individual inside a modern city.
When I saw the rows of identical desks in that enormous office, I felt a little frightened, as though one person had suddenly been reduced to a tiny number. The two of them want nothing exceptional, yet keeping their modest life intact is terribly difficult.
Open the note ↓
When I saw the rows of identical desks in that enormous office, I felt a little frightened, as though one person had suddenly been reduced to a tiny number. The two of them want nothing exceptional, yet keeping their modest life intact is terribly difficult. Living as one person in a crowd may be ordinary, but remaining ordinary is not easy at all.
— Momo
Credits & versions
- Cast
- James Murray · Eleanor Boardman · Bert Roach
Version map
Where to go next
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